The Promise
by YFWE
Summary: Takato thought he'd never see his friend again, but when the digignomes appear in the real world, he finds out he might be able to keep a promise after all. [Tamers]


**Hi! First attempt at a Digimon fanfic. I recently finished rewatching season three and really, really wanted to continue the story somehow.**

**The first chapter is a whole lot of talk, but I'm hopeful you'll stick around long enough, because I have some plans for this thing about which I'm pretty excited! I just have to not abandon it after the first chapter or two, which is what usually happens.**

**The Promise**

**YFWE**

**Ch. 1: Turn**

His digivice hadn't worked since they left.

Takato had checked it often, either daily or perhaps every few days. He kept it in one of the drawers by his bed - he did not have the strength to keep it visible at all times, coming home each day from school or a time spent with friends to find it there, waiting for him, awaiting their next adventure together.

He did not want to think about the device, but sometimes he could not help it. And during those times, he would slide open the drawer and gingerly handle the red digivice that signified the last bastion of a life he once led.

The boy would flop onto his bed, and he would think about the life he had with the digimon, however brief, as he turned the digivice over and over in his hand, holding it out ahead of him and watching the light from the streetlamps outside his window bounce off its glass.

Takato would think of the Digital World. _Turn_. The time he used to spent with Rika and Henry, whom he had felt compelled to call his best friends after that which they had been through together. _Turn_. Of Terriermon, Renamon, Calumon and the others. _Turn_.

Of the promise he made to a friend.

Weeks after the Tamers returned to the real world and vanquished the D-Reaper, Takato had found himself in the park, near the stone edifice that had once housed Guilmon. Perhaps he hoped that, against the odds presented by the Monster Makers, that the scaly red digimon - and, sure, maybe the others, too - would be there waiting, having found a way back into the real world. Guilmon would finally have his play date and the world might once again shift from the way it was - but this time, it would be better off for it.

He had heard the small squeak from behind him that he recognized as the sound of a digignome and was immediately pulled to Guilmon's former hiding place. Sure enough, there it was: the portal to the Digital World, or at least some semblance of it. The small field teemed with data, beckoning Takato to come closer within the hole to fulfill the promise he had made.

But as he soon discovered, while the portal certainly existed, it was not enough to get him into the Digital World.

Initially he tried it himself, sliding down the tunnel and finding himself staring into the small field, brimming with anticipation as he thought of what he would say when he first saw Guilmon. But when he reached his hand through the portal, nothing happened, and on the other side he felt nothing but dirt.

_ Turn_.

Naturally, he turned to Rika and Henry next, but they only encountered the same problem. Henry called his father - Shibumi accompanied him - and both deduced that the portal certainly was there, but it was not strong enough to provide passage to another world. Takato watched in vain over this time as the field became smaller and smaller, until finally there was nothing more of it. Again.

In the months since, Takato had occasionally made the same trek to the park, but he was met with a familiar sight within the shack: nothing. His digivice had not showed the slightest sign of activity. It had been 10 months since the D-Reaper's defeat.

Things had gone back to normal, but still he could not shake the thought of Guilmon and of his promise. During the day he had school to occupy his mind, with lazy afternoons spent with Jeri, Kazu and Kenta often hot on their heels. But at nights, he would sometimes dream he was back there in the other world, and he was Gallantmon again, his red cape fluttering behind him as he stood on a mountain overlooking the Digital World, Guilmon of course a part of him, one being, one mind, together again.

` "Takato! Dinner!"

His mother's voice snapped him back into reality. The sun had nearly set over the modest buildings of West Shinjuku that were visible from his bedroom window - he had been in bed for awhile after school, perhaps hours. It was now evening, and he both welcomed and feared it.

In the months since the D-Reaper's defeat, the Tamers met in Shinjuku, keeping up old friendships while sometimes reminiscing for the days of the past. It was something Takato and Rika had cooked up; they all still lived near each other, but with only Takato, Jeri, Kazu and Kenta attending the same classes - plus other variables of life - it could become strained at best for the other Tamers to see each other very often if they did not make it a point to do so. They met at the spot where they last saw their digimon, where they were last all together as one group - it seemed most fitting, after all.

But lately, the talk was less about digimon and more of what Takato considered mundane, ordinary life. Rika had finally conceded and was, to her mother's delight, modeling - they would see her picture at bus stops or above taxi cabs promoting the newest fall line or hair care product. Kenta, previously the underachiever, had recently discovered a knack for robotics and computers, and often took part in competitions around Tokyo that saw him rising as some sort of coding wizard on par with the Monster Makers; sure enough, Daisy had taken him under her wing and often tutored the teen in what she knew.

Ryo was the only one Takato felt still shared a vested interest in digimon, but he could not always make it to their little meetups. His father often did not allow it.

It disheartened Takato because while he was supposed to be getting over digimon - his parents and the Monster Makers, when he saw them, told him to do so time and time again - he still did not have the desire to just forget Guilmon, or even push him off to the side as a happy, but distant, memory. The other Tamers generally seemed willing to relive their past together, but they also appeared able to separate that recollection from the present, choosing not to dote upon it. Defense mechanism? Perhaps. Or maybe they just did not care - and had never cared - quite like Takato had.

But a date was a date, and after dinner he was out the door and on his way to the park, hoping that Ryo would show up.

When he neared the clearing, Takato could pick out just four figures. _Great_, he thought. _The usuals_.

"Gogglehead!" Rika shouted, cheerfully waving, her ginger hair bobbing against her shoulders as it often did now, having abandoned her tried-and-true ponytail months before. "Didn't think you'd show!"

She pulled him into a quick but tight hug when he neared her, and Takato grimaced from her grip. "Hey, Rika," he said. "Great to see ya. ...how's things?"

"I was just telling Jeri about my shoot today," the girl responded, rolling her eyes definitively as she propped herself up on the back of a bench as she nodded to the brown-haired girl in the green dress, who smiled sweetly at Takato. "Didn't wanna go but mom insisted - 'I set this up months ago, you'll be on billboards,' blah blah blah."

"Your life is so hard," quipped Kazu.

"I didn't _want _to do it because I wanted to come out and see you guys today," Rika countered. "Nothing else. But hey, I got out of school, so I guess it worked out."

"How are you, Takato?" Jeri asked before Rika could tell another story that she supposedly did not want to tell. "You were... quiet at school today."

Takato frowned as Kazu and Kenta eyed him, arms folded. They were probably right; he had not meant to, but he had been a bit distant that day thinking about the meetup to come.

"Oh, er... yeah, sorry about that," the boy said, pawing at the back of his head. "Didn't get enough sleep last night studying for Miss Asami's test today."

"How'd you do?" Kenta asked, his interest piqued.

"Let's not talk about it."

"Well, I _aced _it," the bespectacled boy announced, grinning and posing triumphantly. "Miss Asami said she'd never seen that kind of speed and accuracy, not that I'm surprised -"

"Yeah, yeah, we get it," Kazu growled, slapping his friend on the back. "We're not in school anymore, Kenta. No school talk. Noooooone. Got it?"

Kenta only smiled, recalling the two's conversation earlier as they walked home from school, Kazu lamenting just about every answer on the quiz. It felt good to beat Kazu in something as readily as he did anymore, and he was not going to let the feeling go to waste anytime soon.

Takato, meanwhile, had glanced around the park, squinting his eyes in the hope that he would see Ryo approaching. But for the third time in a row, he never came.

"So I guess this is all of us," Jeri whispered a few moments later. Kenta glanced down at his watch and noted that it was 10 minutes past the hour and the same amount past when they were to meet.

Kazu sighed. "So no Henry again, eh? Any of you see him this week?"

Takato only had twice since they left the Digital World. There was the time he had seen the portal in the old shack and called Rika and Henry to see it, the former there in a heartbeat, her hair not yet out of the familiar ponytail as she scanned the portal, a grin tugging at her face when she reached her hand through but disappearing the moment she hit dirt on the other side.

Henry arrived later. He appeared dazed, nodding only once to Takato and Rika before trying his own luck at the field. Wide-eyed, he stuck his hand through, found the same issue as his friends and looked at them expectantly. "I got nothing," Takato had said with a shrug. "Maybe your dad will know something?"

But he had not, and soon Henry was gone with the portal. He had barely spoken to Rika and Takato, a sullen, hushed presence on the outside of the conversation as Takato explained to Shibumi and Janyu how he had found the portal, and then their later experiments and deductions on what had occurred to bring it to the real world.

And after the Monster Makers decided it was nothing more than an anomaly, Henry was gone as quickly and as quietly as he came. Calls and emails went unanswered thereafter; the Tamers did not even see Suzie, his younger sister.

One day, while in downtown Shinjuku, Takato saw his old friend, who donned that same orange vest and tinted sunglasses as he traversed the bustling city streets. He called to Henry, and thought that, perhaps for a moment, the boy heard him; there was the slightest hesitation in his gait, the tiniest of movements other than his forward momentum. But Henry kept walking, and Takato could never reach him through the sea of people.

Takato finally shrugged at Kazu's question. "No. Nothing. No sign of him."

"No Suzie, either," Jeri said, sighing deeply. "It's like they don't care anymore."

And so it was, their little get-together. Digimon came up a few times, but mostly the group discussed the recent goings-on around Shinjuku and Japan as a whole. They talked, they laughed, they joked - but, in Takato's mind, the conversations were forced, small talk rather than meaningful conversation. What about the digimon, who had left them on that very spot nearly a year before? What about them? How were they doing?

"Do you guys ever think about them?" he asked suddenly.

The other four whirled around to face him, mixed expressions - bewilderment, concern, perhaps a hint of annoyance - meeting him.

"What do you mean, Takato?" Jeri asked, frowning.

"Oh, come on, Jeri, you know what he means," Kazu announced, standing up and beginning to pace around the group. "The digimon. Guilmon. Takato's bringing them up again."

"Well, why not?" Takato defended himself. "Why are you so quick to ignore them, Kazu?!"

"The same reason as the rest of us, chumley. We've moved on. It was a great time, and I miss Guarddromon sometimes, but some of us want to get on with our lives, ya know?"

"How can you say that?" Takato whispered. "Guilmon was..."

"I can't," Kazu exclaimed, arms in the air. "I can't. Rika, you try." He walked off a little farther into the clearing, hands clasped, back turned to the group.

Rika sighed, heaving her legs from underneath her to slide across the grass to her friend. "...look, Takato," she said. "It's not that we don't care..."

"Sure looks like it."

"...it's that, well, we have to get over this eventually, right? When Renamon left, I..." she paused, "...well, I didn't know what to do with myself. I didn't. She was my best friend, like Guilmon was yours. But Takato, it's been months. Almost a year. Just because we don't talk about them doesn't mean we don't care. It's just... easier this way."

"Yeah," Kenta chimed in. "I'd love to see MarineAngemon again. But I can't, and I gotta deal with that."

He did not want to admit Rika's truth, and internally did not, but Takato gave a quick shrug and nod to his friend, who had placed her hand in his, squeezing it tight and reassuringly. "Good?" she asked. He nodded again.

"All right, Kazu, come on back," she called, adding, with a wink to Kenta, "I want to hear about that test today!"

And while Takato brought himself to talk and laugh with his friends from then on, he could not quite shake the feeling he had for the digimon, and for their fate, their destiny. It stretched long into the evening - long past his friends' departure, even. "No, go on, it's fine," he had said as they departed. "Mom and dad will force me to bake if I go home now. I'll just lay here for a little bit, cool?"

He struggled with the thought of never coming back to the park again, perhaps changing their meeting place in the future to avoid the memories flooding back as readily as they did when he sat in the clearing where he last saw Guilmon. Maybe his friends were right. Perhaps what he needed was to wean himself off digimon, and perhaps things would get a little better. He would still feel that hole in his heart in which Guilmon had resided - or, at least, that was how he felt in that moment - but things would be better. He would see.

He rose to his feet, thinking fleetingly of the digivice back home. Maybe he would throw it out, or perhaps give it to his mother to put in one of the old memories boxes in the attic.

But as he turned to leave, he heard the familiar squeak, followed by a shining light over his shoulder.

Takato whirled around and found himself face to face with a digignome.

He rubbed his eyes - he must be dreaming; perhaps he fell asleep on the grass and this was just a very vivid illusion from his mind - but the little creature was still there, hovering. It chirped one more time and rose into the air above the clearing, Takato following its every movement, stunned, mouth agape.

In moments, another digignome emerged from a nearby tree. Then another. And another, soaring from a drain in the ground. Five rustled their way out of a trash bin.

Soon, the sky over the park was full of digignomes, twinkling as though they were the night stars, squeaking happily to each other and peeking at Takato.

One, the gnome that had originally approached Takato, gave a quick attention-getting screech and looked into the distance - a direction Takato knew to be the old shack.

A short distance away, Takato's digivice began to glow.

**END**


End file.
